Adam Lobon's blog

Increasing Confidence on a shoe string - No Mystery, NO Jargon

There is no shortage of advice out there about how to increase confidence.
Some of which you have to pay a huge amount for the privilege of finding out. You can quite easily be led up the garden path where later you fall flat on your face.

How much then?
It's a bit like wanting to build a website and being told by a company that it will cost £20,000 - they will perhaps use words that you don't understand and make the whole process a little mysterious. 
If you have a little insight its not and the process is simple - if you have the right information a professional job can be done on a shoe string.

For example a local council payed a web developer £250,000 to rebuild there website - which upon completion was totally impractical and had to be scraped.  They tried a different approach & had several intern students build them a new site at no cost to them.

So how much does it cost then ?
How much are you prepared to pay and does it have anything to do with money?
Not really - its down to your own intention and desire to change.

Time
You can't instantly develop a long lasting confidence, nor is it helpful to boost up the ego or repeat continuous mantra like affirmations without depth. You can boost yourself up of course for a short time but unfortunately 'what goes up must come down'.  This kind of confidence is short lived and doesn't come from a deep place.  Throughout this series we are looking at how we develop confidence through inner peace.

Meditation
It's helpful to invest time into creating a foundation of peace within the mind. 
This is where meditation practice comes in...

Also to focus on practical things within your life such as appearance, attitudes, diet, exercise - these factors can contribute significantly to improving our general sense of well being - if we look after our self and start to develop inner peace within we will start to see results...

With results come confidence, then more activity, then more confidence etc....

Is depression your parents fault?

Its too easy to blame parents that's why it is so popular.
We inherited genes and patterns of behaviour, they gave us a body.

Our mind however has a greater history. If we can get our head around our mind being different to our body then we can start to have the confidence to move away from blame and towards freedom.

The most inspiring characteristic of our mind is that it can change - we have the power to make it change through developing a clear decision and determination - meditation encourages this.

Parents do what they can - the rest hinges on your decision making.

Know your enemy..

Do you have any enemies?

People you don't like?
Folks you choose to ignore?
Neighbors you scorn? 
Greedy politicians?
Stupid politicians?
Those with funny accents
Rival football supporters

Inanimate stuff

Political systems?
Modern art?
The X Factor...?

The ranting list goes on and on

Take all that rant - there is a lot of collective power. 

Who is your real enemy - surely an enemy is someone or something that interferes with your wishes and plans.  Who or what is that?

Your own distraction ?
   

KILL YOUR LAPTOP

Back in the 90's there was a local band called Neds Atomic Dustbin who released a song called "Kill Your Television".  I want to change the song to "Kill your laptop".  Then once you have done that go for your phone, especially if its an iPhone.
 
One friend of mine once flushed his phone down the toilet! One of my phones committed suicide by jumping into a washing up bowl, there was a euphoria that swept through my system as I saw it jumping out of my breast pocket into the bowl.

Why such drastic measures?  Mentally kill it - recognizing it has no power, no meaning and finally no benefit. They don't really do anything and they can't create change!

Why?  Only you can create change with power of your intention.  It is your intention that creates change - not the internet, your website, facebook, twitter, whatever.

As the net becomes more elaborate and the systems to access more complex we fascinate - missing the point and moving further and further away from the real source of change...our mind - our intention.  

Beware of expensive life coaches!

Everywhere you turn there are self proclaimed life coaches, using the art of NLP to guide there clients.

One thing I question is why they charge so much and they take on the position of coaching you how to live your life.

 You can coach and empower yourself - if you learn how to meditate.

 Meditation creates Mind Space which in turns brings creativity and vision - this experience is priceless.

 There are many meditations now being given for free, both live and online. If you take the time to meditate you will see the results coming.  Growing and evolving from within.

Too many words...

 

A friend of mine read a 500 page book that I lent her about Loving Kindness.  Three quarters of the way through she said astutely:

"Its message is to love others"

That's the point, how many words are needed to get it!

Lay down your guns, come out with your hands up!!!

Positive thinking is talked about now in such a loose, worldly fashion, it can often lead to suffering and problems for us.  Several days ago in the news there was an article about the power of negative thinking - as a way of lifting the mind up!

Focusing on what we could loose as a way of keeping the mind centered - of course it has to be in a controlled fashion for example:

"What would it be like if I was to not have my partner, children or job" -

In this way it makes us grateful for what we have - so although the article was titled the power of negative thinking it actually leads to a positive result.

If our premise for engaging in activities is to be victorious - when we are in conversation, when we sit an exam, when we go for a promotion, when we go on a date - then of course we are let down and disappointed when it doesn't work out - leading to depression.

We are quite easily led by our positive expectation so when it doesn't work out we are left disheartened. 

We can smile all we like - but as Kerouac pointed out in one of his poems,
"happiness isn't showing your teeth".

Lay down your guns, come out with your hands up!!! Means we surrender the push to succeed - we let others have that.  By doing this we take the pressure off our self - it really doesn't matter.  Meditation helps us do this. 

With this mind space we find huge creativity, all the things we want come - because we have held up the white flag and stopped fighting and pushing. 

In this space our physical and mental health greatly improve - we also have no foundation for further disappointment.

Stop the Pressure!

Our sense of well being and our ability to control our mind is dependent upon many factors. 

Politicians talk about creating external change to bolster the sense of well being in society at large - unfortunately no amount of external tinkering has the power to change the outlook of individuals.

Depression can arise from a build up of pressure - ultimately this pressure arises from within, our responses to the circumstances in our life.

The word 'competitiveness' is used like a great virtue - there are competitiveness centers, competitiveness think tanks - courses on how to increase, improve and enhance your competitiveness. 

Almost from the word dot we are encouraged and pressurized to compete and succeed. 

Of course this rubs off onto us and we start to demand so called "success" from our self.

Setting high expectations.  Even if we get a 2.1 degree it can be disappointing because we didn't get a first.  The competitive mind is always on the look out to compare ones own experience with others. 

If we see someone obviously succeeding (apparently) a lot more than we are - this can be depressing!!

The pressure comes from our own agenda and this can drive us forward - but not in a peaceful, happy way.  Walk around downtown do you see people peaceful, smiling and happy - take a look at the drivers faces on the way to work in the morning or on the motorway - peaceful, content?

How to stop the pressure from within causing stress and depression - SURRENDER - more coming in the next post....

The Elevator Mind

Are you going up or down?

There is a new job vacancy at the House of Parliament - lift operator: £17,000 PA with a pension plan....

I was in an elevator today at the fantastic Maple House  conference centre and before we knew it we had reached one of the lower ground floors. Not the floor we wanted to be on.  We ended up there because we hadn't been paying attention.

In Part 1 of the Increasing Confidence, Reducing Depression series we look at the way to stop the trigger of depression firing into the mind - through practicing mindfulness, being attentive to the play of the mind and watching out for negativity...

Easier said than done - sometimes the negativity slips through the customs check of our mind and can start to take over our thoughts. 

So at this time we need to be on the look out for ways to stop negative thinking getting out of hand - even if we are being influenced by negativity we don't have to be taken in by it.

When we see the lift of our mind going down we can try this....

Sometimes when we hear a noise we don't really connect with it...
Or somebody is speaking to us but we are not interested so we don't listen- we can hear something but it just isn't registering.  We can do the same with the negativity in our own mind.

To be able to do this then at first we must be able to distinguish the difference between our reaction and the circumstance - this is where meditation practice helps as this gives us some perspective. This helps us to start to look within the mind and see the way it which it reacts and responds. 

Depression arises from a cycle of negative thinking - a lethargic mind.  Keeping the mind sharp and active is important, meditation provides a workout for the mind.

So even though there is some negative influence in our mind we don't have to believe it or be taken in by it - if at this time we can start to engage in a meditation practice then it is possible for us to learn how to redirect our mind.  It is almost like our mind drops and we learn to lift it back up  - and then again.  

For example thinking that we are a failure/loser - we can stop this thought and focus on what we have accomplished - what we can accomplish and what we will accomplish.  We turn our mind.

Meditation practice empowers us to strengthen our resolve to turn our mind around....

With training we can see our thoughts going down and like in an elevator press a button and go back up...

Increase Confidence, Reducing Depression - Part 1: Stopping the Trigger

In this series we are investigating each day how to reduce depression, through increasing confidence and learning to meditate.

Today we will be looking at the triggers of depression, but most importantly how to try and stop this crippling emotion in its tracks.

We all know what makes us unhappy - it seems environmental conditions are largely responsible for a dip in the mood. When a relationship ends, when we loose a job, or supposedly fail at something, we fall ill, or things happen that we don't expect or disappoint us. 

As well as our circumstances changing it is also important to notice how our critically important our responses are to the tides of change.  When are responses become negative then this is when our mood dips - if our reactions are continuously negative then this begins the spiral process. 

This is where meditation comes into play.  If we learn or know how to meditate, then we can develop the ability to watch the mind and see negativity in its early stages.  We can start to see the difference between our outer and inner worlds. 

The way in which our outer world affects our mood depends on how we choose to respond to it - this depends upon our inner world and the responses that we are used to.

The well known practice of mindfulness is fundamental here - keeping an eye on the play of the mind, being attentive to the responses that we have. To achieve success, we need to distance our self from the thought process - we need to create some objectivity within.

This objectivity allows us to see the triggers of negativity threatening and helps us to move our mind in a more positive direction before the trigger is pulled and depression is fired.